It
must be confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent
treatises which are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards
confirming the general error. Not the least important service which,
hereafter, mankind will owe to Phrenology, may, perhaps, be recognized
in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting
laws of taste. These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable,
and these laws as really susceptible of system as are any whatever.
In the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect
more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than
by the admirers of what is termed the "good old Pope," or the "good
old Goldsmith school" of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more
natural and more ideal compositions of such authors as Coetlogon and
Lamartine* in France; Herder, Korner, and Uhland, in Germany; Brun and
Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegner, Nyberg*(2) in Sweden; Keats,
Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow
in America. "De gustibus non," say these "good-old school" fellows;
and we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is-
"We pity your taste- we pity every body's taste but our own."
* We allude here chiefly to the "David" of Coetlogon and only to the
"Chute d'un Ange" of Lamartine.
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